William Clark

William Clark (August 1, 1770 – September 1, 1838) was an American explorer, soldier, Indian agent, and territorial governor. He is best remembered for sharing command of the Lewis and Clark Expedition from 1804 to 1806, the first major undertaking to chart much of the present-day Western United States and strengthen American claims to the Pacific Northwest.

Clark was born in Caroline County, Virginia, the ninth of ten children. His parents, John and Ann Rogers Clark, were English and possibly Scots, owned several modest plantations and enslaved people, and belonged to the Anglican Church. He received no formal schooling, learning instead from tutors at home. Later in life, he felt self-conscious about his irregular grammar and spelling—he wrote "Sioux" 27 different ways in his expedition journals—and wanted them corrected before publication. Though spelling was not yet standardized, his vocabulary showed he was well read. Five older brothers fought in the American Revolution, but William was too young. His eldest brother, Jonathan, became a colonel and later a brigadier general in the Virginia militia; another brother, George Rogers Clark, rose to general and fought in Kentucky against British-allied Native Americans. After the war, the two oldest brothers arranged for the family to move to Kentucky. William, his parents, three sisters, and the family’s enslaved people arrived in March 1785, traveling overland to Redstone Landing (now Brownsville, Pennsylvania) and then down the Ohio River by flatboat. They settled at "Mulberry Hill," a plantation on Beargrass Creek near Louisville, which was Clark’s main home until 1803. There, George Rogers Clark taught him wilderness survival.

During the Northwest Indian War, 19-year-old Clark joined a volunteer militia under Major John Hardin in 1789, keeping a detailed journal of the campaign—a habit he kept for life. Hardin’s force advanced against the Wea Indians on the Wabash River but mistakenly attacked a peaceful Shawnee hunting camp, killing eight men, women, and children. In 1790, General Arthur St. Clair commissioned Clark as a captain in the Clarksville, Indiana militia. One older source says he was sent on a mission to the Creek and Cherokee in the Southeast, possibly visiting New Orleans, which kept him from participating in General Josiah Harmar’s failed campaign. In 1791, he served as an ensign and acti